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It’s Time to End Walking-Horse Abuse

Tennessee Walking Horses desperately need your help. These majestic and gentle-natured creatures are a breed of horse famous for their distinctive, smooth, high-stepping walk. Sadly, a cruel and illegal procedure called “soring” is all too frequently used to elicit an exaggerated movement, called the “big lick,” in order to win prizes at horse shows.

Soring is the gruesome practice of using chemicals and painful devices to injure a horse’s front limbs, making any contact with the ground so painful that the horse quickly jerks up his legs to relieve the pressure. Soring causes such intense pain that its victims often cannot stand for several days afterward.

Although soring was banned nationwide in 1970, inadequate legal penalties and lax enforcement have allowed this cruel practice to continue. A new bill, H.R. 6388, will address these inadequacies by amending the federal Horse Protection Act and improving protections for horses from soring, and we need your help in building support for this critical legislation!

What You Can DoPlease contact your U.S. representative and urge him/her to cosponsor H.R. 6388 and support strong amendments to the Horse Protection Act to better protect horses from soring.